hankyoreh

A South Korean delegation goes to North Korea on Thursday to discuss how to deal with unspent fuel rods at the Yongbyon nuclear facility, the last of the eleven parts of nuclear disablement, which is itself part of the second phase of the denuclearization of North Korea as outlined in the October 3 Agreement.

A government official said Tuesday that Hwang Joon-Kook, the South Korean Foreign Ministry’s chief nuclear envoy, and a team of five others would be traveling to North Korea by way of Beijing on Thursday to investigate the “technical and economic aspects” necessary to determine how to proceed on the unspent fuel rods.

“They will visit the storage area for the 14,000 unspent fuel rods the North has declared it has, while the experts among them will look at the actual rods and check on how they’re being kept,” the official said.

The visit comes as part of the agreement made in principle during a meeting of North and South Korea’s heads of delegation to the six-party talks, held ahead of the six-party talks in Beijing last December. Later, on Dec. 29, the South proposed that it send a team in early January, to which the North finally responded on Monday, saying it would like to have the team visit “within the week.”

Seoul has long made it clear to Pyongyang, if always in unofficial terms, that it would like to purchase the North’s unspent fuel rods. The North, too, has expressed its interest in selling them, informing the South of the technical specifications of its unspent fuel rods last year.

The same government official said the visit is “thoroughly working-level and will focus on directly confirming economic and technical issues about the unspent fuel rods,” adding that “it is not about making a decision, and it is only happening so that we can get the facts needed to make a decision later on.”

The official said he understands the fuel rods to contain one hundred tons of plutonium and be worth US$11 million on the international market.

The visit is the first by a South Korean senior delegate to the six-party talks since another led by his predecessor Lim Sung-nam, when it was part of a larger six-party visit to the Yongbyon facility in November 2007. It also marks the first time a South Korean official visits North Korea since the inauguration of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]